It's Thursday, March 25th. I'm Ekela Hughes.

And I'm getting in rest now and this is what a day, the only podcast that's allowed in the quiet car of trains.

Yeah, we worked out a deal with trains, so don't even worry about the details.

On today's show, we talked to an organizer about the shootings in Georgia and a part of the story that deserves more attention, bends and headlines.

So it's been just over a week since a gunman killed eight people at three spas in the Metro Atlanta area.

In three days, since another gunman killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado.

Both of these horrific mass shootings have renewed the American tradition of talking about the gun violence epidemic that we have here and hoping once again that there's any action at all.

And while mass shootings get headlines, gun violence overall didn't go away with the pandemic.

Data from the gun violence archive shows that gun deaths and injuries actually increased last year, making 2020 the deadliest gun violence year in decades.

We'll be covering that issue more in the coming days, but today we wanted to take a moment to return to the victims in Georgia, six of whom were women of Asian descent,

targeted at massage parlors and spas.

We don't know much more about the details of these individuals work, but at least one location had reportedly been the subject of prostitution stings by the Atlanta Police Department, according to the Washington Post.

The shooter allegedly told law enforcement that he needed to quote eliminate quote temptations.

And so advocates have talked about the shootings in the context of violence targeted at an often dehumanized and stigmatized community of AAPI women.

Their point being he viewed their lives in that manner, no matter what their jobs actually were to better understand this and how to dismantle it.

We spoke to ease tongue new in of New York City's red canary song a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and massage parlors workers.

They provide mutual aid advocate for the decriminalization of sex work and have been speaking out about the shootings in Georgia last week. Here's our conversation.

Eves, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're really privileged to talk to you.

So while we don't really know if the victims and the shootings participated in sex work themselves, the shooter targeted them at spas and massage parlors where they worked and reportedly talked about eliminating temptation.

So can you explain the intersection between massage parlors and sex work and how you're thinking about that and responding to the event?

Sure. So partially we have to acknowledge that some people who work in massage businesses do engage in sex work.

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